None of us were really going to be happy Tuesday night. We were only going to be somewhere between horrified and relieved.
What I mean is, most young Canadians I spoke to about the U.S. election expressed the same thing. A win for Mitt Romney would be a win for ignorance and evil. A win for Barack Obama, on the other hand, could save us, and the world, from the doom cooking down south. It wasn’t a terribly nuanced outlook, but it gave us something to talk about.
But now that our man in Washington has earned another four years, there’s something we need to bear in mind.
Obama’s re-election does not absolve us of responsibility for being good global citizens.
We’ve fallen prey to this kind of thinking in the past. We’ve been very eager to lend our support to another country’s president.
But an article published early Tuesday in the National Post argued that a win for Obama would likely mean increased need for Canadian military spending, a migration of our good doctors to the U.S. and more ‘Buy American’ protectionist measures that could hurt the Canadian economy.
We might tell ourselves that we’re thinking more globally, more altruistically. Although they may prove to be problems for the Canadian government, those same Obama policies could mean less foreign occupation by U.S. forces, as well as better access to healthcare and better jobs for Americans.
That’s all well and good. But it’s still remarkable that Canada’s honeymoon phase with the charismatic president has lasted so long.
I don’t mean to discount the global influence of a U.S. president, the good work Obama has done or the fact that, whether you’re a fan of the Democrats or Republicans, your preferred U.S. presidential candidate stands at least a few steps to the right of any major Canadian political party. But over the next four years, some of us will need to check our unconditional support for Barack Obama.
As of Wednesday evening, all indications were that it was a U.S. drone strike targeting al-Qaeda militants that occurred in Yemen earlier in the day. More reports of Obama’s foreign policy activities – favourable or otherwise – will define Obama’s presidency as it moves toward and through its second term. Be it with Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, China or someone else, there will be controversy.
We like to feel that someone’s doing the world’s good work for us. We like trusting someone as powerful and inspiring as Obama. We like to feel free of the futility in our Canadian parliament, which includes multiple major parties but a level of party discipline that’s unseen anywhere else in the developed world.
But if Mitt Romney was able to prove anything in his campaign, it was that we need to mix hope with realism as we look to U.S. leadership. We can do that without vilifying our favourite leader of the free world.
By Tarun Sanda
Recently U.S. President Barack Obama announced that the proposed 2013 budget includes cutbacks that would halt and possibly terminate progress on planetary science missions. From an economic point of view, planetary science is the easiest place to save money. However, is it wise to do so?
Assume for a minute that we are not alone in this universe. That somewhere far off, in a different galaxy, in a different time, lived a species similar to the human race. They are similar in the sense that they are able to understand and hypothesize about the world around them. But what if those individuals had the opportunity to venture further out and explore the cosmos beyond their native land, yet decided against it, as it did not seem economically viable at the time?
Given an infinite amount of time, any event is possible. Our extinction is inevitable, however the purpose of our being is to first ensure our survival. Although there is no sign of a cataclysmic event decimating all life on Earth in the near future, we know that our time on Earth is on the clock. With the rate that we are consuming the resources our planet has, it will not be long before we are faced with the issue that there might not be anything for us to fight over anymore. Then what? Soon we will run out of oil, and then food, and then water. Is this the way the world ends? With us at each other’s throats, doing our best to be the last one standing amidst chaos?
We, and in turn our governments, should be inclined to spend time and money into planetary exploration. If the human race is to survive, it should not take us over 40 years after the first Moon landing of Apollo 11 to send the Curiosity Rover to Mars. There may be more pressing issues that need immediate attention than exploring the depths of the cosmos, and one day there may be a time where space may be the most pressing issue, but by then it might be too late. Maybe the universe is littered with species that had the chance to extend their existence, however decided not to because it did not seem economically beneficial or urgent to be deemed a priority to expand their presence. Is it possible that our ignorance could one day be the cause of our extinction?
